SFRR
by Sandileina
Summary: Marui stresses, and Yagyuu has no face. It’s Rikkai. Not much more needs to be said. xD


**Disclaimer: **Here's a random fact: France is not a type of spoon. Here's another random fact: I don't own Prince of Tennis, or any of the characters. :)

**Rating: **PG

**Warnings: **A coupla uses of strong language. I think that's it...

**Summary: **Marui stresses, and Yagyuu has no face. It's Rikkai; not much more needs to be said. xD

**Author's notes:** Another Rikkai drabblething. **You don't have to have read the ones that come before this, but it might help a bit. **The drabblething list goes:

**Times of Stress**

**Passing the Time**

**How to ask out Marui Bunta**

**Four Days Later**

**October Ice**

**Because I Love You**

**Evil**

**Further Nonsense**

**Dear Diary**

**Kind of… the same**

**100 Word Challenges**

**Driver in a Hurry, Child in a Coma**

**Doctor, doctor!**

**The Woes of Solomon Grundy**

**I'm Not Going**

**The Little Things**

**I Had To**

**He WHAT?!**

**Operation: Christmas Party**

**Being Fukubuchou**

**Once Upon a Time**

**My Brother Bunta**

**Dear Diary: Living with Niou-senpai**

**A Morning at the Pool**

**This is Love**

**SFRR**

Enjoy the randomness of my mind. ;p

-------------------------------

"It's the twenty-fourth today!" Marui wailed. "We have three days. Three!"

"Two and a bit, actually," said Yagyuu, checking his watch. "Maybe you should be revising instead of having coffee."

Marui stuck his tongue out at him. "Shut up, Yagyuu. You have no face."

"… I'm sorry, what?"

"You have no face. Face you have none. Of face you have not of."

"… I repeat, what?"

Marui flung his hands up in exasperation. "It's not a hard concept to grasp! _You_ should be even more worried than I am about the entrance exam if you can't even understand that!"

If Yagyuu had been Yanagi, then he was sure he would be feeling his brain twisting right about now. Luckily, he wasn't, and was well-used to Niou's idiosyncrasies. He let Marui's comments pass.

"It's not fair, you know," Marui complained, already moving onto a completely different subject. "Did you know that in England you're allowed to drop all your subjects except for three or four by the time you're sixteen? How come all our subjects are compulsory until third year of highschool?"

"Religious Education isn't compulsory after junior high," Yagyuu pointed out reasonably.

"Yeah, but you're probably gonna take it anyway, aren't you? And that's like, the only thing that's not compulsory. It's not fair."

"Well, in England they have to take end-of-year exams called GCSEs before they can drop down to four subjects. We don't have that."

Marui gaped. "Really? That's stupid."

"More or less stupid than the compulsory subjects?"

Marui took a bite of his muffin. "Less," he said finally. "Cos, yanno, we have to take the highschool entrance exam."

"That's true. But the exam isn't very hard."

"Yeah. Oh, that reminds me! It's Mura's birthday in like, a week and a half." Yagyuu chose not to ask how that in any way reminded Marui of Yukimura's birthday. "We should totally throw him a surprise party. At fukubuchou's house."

"I don't think we should traumatise Sanada any more than we already have," Yagyuu said diplomatically. "We could hold it at mine?"

"Yeah!" Marui's eyes lit up enthusiastically. "That'd be great! Heh, I can get Akaya to draw a banner saying 'Happy sixteenth' in big fuck-off letters with those crayons Mura got him for Christmas."

Yagyuu looked puzzled. "Happy sixteenth?"

"Well, yeah. He's…" Marui stopped. "Wait, that doesn't work. He's in our year."

The Niou inside Yagyuu's mind clapped sarcastically. "Yes, he is."

"… But… wait…" Marui blinked several times. "Wait… Mura's only fourteen?! Fucking _hell_! He's like, _Akaya_'s age!! Akaya's fourteen! What the hell?!"

"You didn't realise this before?" Yagyuu asked, bemused.

"But, but, but, I'm sixteen in two months! Mura _can't_ be fourteen!"

"He'll be fifteen in, as you said, a week and a half."

"But…!" Marui looked like he was going to fall over from shock. Yagyuu struggled not to laugh. He managed it by coughing politely and adjusting his glasses.

"Yukimura just happens to be very mature for his age. Just as you happen to be immature for your age."

"Yeah, but… Akaya! Mura! Fourteen! Both of them!"

"It _is_ a little strange," Yagyuu conceded, "but it's not that much of a revelation. I'm surprised you didn't realise this before."

"I didn't really think about it! I just thought… well, he's in my year, so I thought he's my age!"

"He _is_ your age," Yagyuu said patiently. "It's just that he's one of the youngest in our year, and you're one of the oldest."

"Good god…" Marui sat back in his chair, brain out for the count.

Yagyuu's phone started to ring. He pulled it out of his pocket and glanced at the screen before answering it. "Hello, Niou."

"Yo. Is Maru there?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Tell him his phone's off and the bratling's elephant is about to explode."

"… Alright. Any particular reason?" But Niou had hung up.

"…" Yagyuu put his phone away and said, "Niou says that your phone's off and the bratling's elephant is about to explode."

"Don't call him a bratling," Marui said automatically.

"I was quoting word for word."

"Oh, right." Marui's eyes came back into focus, and he replayed Yagyuu's words in his mind. "Wait, what was the message again? My phone's off, and…?"

"And Akaya's elephant is apparently about to explode."

Marui blinked some more. Then he slowly leaned forward and banged his head on the café table.

"Do you ever get the feeling that the world just left you behind?" he asked muffledly.

"Constantly. Welcome to my semi-permanent state of mind. Or, as I like to call it, Sanity in the Face of the Rest of the Regulars."

"SFRR, huh? Gotcha."

"So do you have any idea what this elephant thing is all about?"

"I don't have a clue. I guess I'd better turn my phone on though." Marui burrowed through his many and various pockets until he found it, switching it on. It made a happy sound and Marui promptly shoved it back into his pocket.

"It's reminding me to revise," he grumbled. "Stupid thing."

"You told it to, though."

"Shut up, Yagyuu! You have no face!"

Yagyuu opened his mouth, then wisely shut it again.

Marui drained the rest of his coffee and picked up the rest of his muffin, standing up and wrapping his scarf around his shoulders clumsily.

"Thanks for the coffee," he said, kicking his chair in under the table.

"Not at all," said Yagyuu politely.

"See you at practice tomorrow." Marui waved and left, eyes still a little vacant from shock.

Yagyuu finished his tea and fished out his phone again as he got ready to leave. He dialled Niou's number and waited.

"What?" Niou said as he picked up.

"What was that about an exploding elephant?" Yagyuu asked, taking Niou's lack of manners as completely normal.

"Oh, nothing. You wouldn't understand."

"… Because I have no face?"

There was silence on the other end of the line. Then Niou said slowly, in the closest thing he ever got to awe, "That's it _exactly_. Good grief… It all makes sense now."

'_SFRR_', Yagyuu chanted silently. "I'm sure it does. Do you want to go catch a film or something later?"

"Nah, there's nothin' good on. You can come round and help me teach the bratling Shougi if you like?"

Yagyuu considered. "That sounds good. I can help you revise English as well."

"Oh, yeah… bloody exams. Well, never mind, they'll be over soon. Come over whenever."

"Alright. Jaa."

"Oh, wait, Hiroshi?"

"Yes?"

"The bratling says my aunt's cat is tabby. Yanagi says it's tortoiseshell. My aunt says it's a tabby-cross. Since I'm probably even more colourblind than the damn cat, which is it?"

"… I believe it's a tortoiseshell-tabby-cross."

"Gotcha. See you later. Don't give birth on the way over." Niou hung up.

Yagyuu looked at the little stone statue of Buddha that perched in the middle of the street. "No, I have no idea either," he informed it with a sigh. Then he quickly said it again, but minus the sigh. Sighing was Yukimura's thing. Golf-playing Gentlemen did not sigh.

"That's better," he muttered. Confident in his sanity, Yagyuu headed on down to Niou's.

-------------------------------

Shougi: Japanese chess.

Jaa: Informal way of saying 'see you', basically.

-------------------------------

Sandy: I hate exams. So I started this. It was _meant_ to be about Maru-chan stressing over his entrance exam… but… then… yeah. I don't pretend to have control over my brain… -.-;;

Please find it in your heart to leave a review! I would really, really appreciate it if you could quote in the review your favourite line, phrase, whatever for me. That'd be dead helpful. n.n But you don't have to, of course.

Until next time!


End file.
